Sports to be included in poverty reduction strategy - Amoah

Accra, June 8, GNA - The Ministry of Education and Sports is to submit proposals to the National Development Planning Commission for sports to be included in the Ghana Poverty Reduction Strategy as a tool for development. The ministry said the impact of sports particularly on education, the economy, health and the environment was so enormous such that the aim of reducing poverty would be incomplete without including sports.

Mr O. B. Amoah, a Deputy Minister of Education and Sports, was speaking to GNA Sports on his return from New York where he represented the Ministry at this year's International Year of Sport and Physical Education by the United Nations General Assembly. The event, which marked 60 years of the founding of the UN at the end of the Second World War, was to use sports as a tool to achieve the Millennium Development Goals.

Among the eight-point Millennium Development Goals is to use sports to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger, achieve universal primary education, promote gender equality and empowerment and to reduce child mortality and improve maternal health. Mr Amoah said the Ministry's proposal, which is in line with the Millennium Development Goals, would examine the multiplier effects of sport on the economy, especially in job creation, the issue of dependency ratio and self-reliance.

He said if properly managed, sports could become one, if not the fastest, avenue of wealth creation thereby reducing poverty in the country. The minister cited the hosting of the 2008 African Cup of Nations and how, if well coordinated, could create enormous jobs for the youth and wealth for every facet of the economy.